


From a Certain Point of View

by Not_The_Cicada



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Eating Disorders, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, I Don't Even Know, I couldn't stop looking at Luke's jaw in Episode VI like a creeper and thinking he looked bulimic, M/M, Self-Destruction, and then trying to figure out how that could have come about, so that it would match my headcanon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-09 17:29:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5549192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_The_Cicada/pseuds/Not_The_Cicada
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."</p><p>Luke self destructs.</p><p>[Now a multi-chapter fic]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. From a Certain Point of View

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a trigger warning for the issues mentioned in the tags, be your own best advocate and use your own judgment in the media you read, as always <3

Cloud City was a liminal place. Neither space nor sand, on the line of day and night. 

As such, it brought changes. 

For Han, Luke would find, it was the lines beside his eyes that deepened when he was tired. It was the muscle that twitched in his jaw at phantom hands that were no longer there. It was the memory of blindness from the carbonite that made him squint when he didn’t have to. 

For Luke, it was the replacement of the biological with the mechanical. It was the knowledge that he was not infallible. It was the temporary loss of his friends from beyond his rescue. 

And it was the eventual supplanting of health with sickness, and of life with restriction. 

\-----

It began slowly enough. Stricter, he had to be stricter. Yoda had warned him he would destroy what they had fought for and he hadn’t listened.  
At night he listens to the mechanical whir of his wrist and doesn’t think overlong of the feeling of Leia’s concern when she rescued him. He thinks instead on dangling from a weathervane, powerless and helpless, miles away from friends needing his help. 

He controls his thoughts. He doesn’t dwell on the churning feelings inside when he examines the scene in his mind of Han and Leia kissing. He refuses to think of Han at all until they have rescued him, as if that indulgence would be too much and he would be taken from him. 

He controls his actions. Trains harder. Practices more.  
Eats less. 

He controls his actions. Trains harder yet again. Practices more.  
Eats even less. 

And less. 

\--

They rescue Han. Of course they do. Only, it should have been easier. Faster. Earlier.  
Earlier enough that Han could have avoided the lingering effects of the hibernation sickness.  
Even earlier and perhaps Luke could have done something to prevent their torture in the first place. 

But it wasn’t for a Jedi to bemoan the past. And so, while his stomach clenches when Han winces at something outside of his field of view, when his mind tricks him into thinking he is still blind…  
Well, then?  
Then Luke trains harder, and reminds himself to be better.  
\-----

It is a Jedi trial, he explains when Han comes to get dinner with him the first day. So, really, he couldn’t.  
Luke is sure that Han doesn’t really look as disappointed as the glimpse of him turning away would make it seem. 

He has only just begun, he explains when Han comes by at dinner time on the second day. Jedi trials were just that, trials, not something to be given up lightly. And he really couldn’t afford to fail again, he thinks. 

Han makes a joke and leans like a rogue against Luke’s doorframe on the third day. At least that is how it looks to Luke, and really, he shouldn’t trust his mind on these things, he has only to look at how Han acts around Leia. 

He is weak enough to invite Han in, but he sates himself on water and throws jokes and comments around the room where they spark brightly against Han’s easy confidence. He manages to convince Han to go take care of himself, and Han shoots him a steady look as he leaves. 

Not today either, Han, he tells him on the fourth day, and really, why does he keep trying? Luke encourages him to ask Leia. His hands don’t shake, he tells himself, not even a little when he sees the muscle twitch in Han’s jaw, senseless damage at the hands of the Empire. 

Han grabs his wrist the fifth day. Luke doesn’t think about the way his fingers wrap satisfyingly around his real wrist and instead clenches his mechanical hand inside his pocket.  
Han asks, “Is this about-”  
Luke cuts him off. It is training. Always training. It was incomplete and he must rectify that. 

Han doesn’t come around on the sixth day.  
That is the day that Luke wraps a measuring tape around the circumference of his wrist and somehow finds the answer wanting. 

The seventh day Han is a storm at his doorstep, telling him in no uncertain terms that “Her Royal Highness” will be exceptionally pissy if Han doesn’t collect Luke for dinner tonight.  
And that muscle goes in Han’s jaw, making the. place in the screaming depth of Luke’s skull twinge, but also, it’s so hard set, his jaw, that Luke can’t bear to disappoint him.  
And so Luke certainly doesn’t lie when he tells Han he had just finished. And he isn’t lying when he says he is eating tonight with him. But if maybe he is sick later that night, well, who is to take exception to that? After all, it’s only training. 

\-----

Han grabs his wrist and pulls him behind a drift on patrol one day, out of sight of a scouting droid. 

Luke thinks absently, past the warm buzzing in his skull, that perhaps his fingers overlap tighter.  
He stops measuring his wrist with the tape that day, thinking perhaps to rely on Han’s fingers, but finds himself measuring other things. His hips, his waist, and inexplicably his neck. 

He doesn’t think overly closely on these things. After all, he has training to attend to. 

\-----

He pushes the feeling of Han’s fingers wrapped around his wrist away after the latest time he sees Han and Leia so close, heads bent together.

If he happens to unfold it and think on it late at night when his stomach aches hollow and bends him in half in bed, well, he never said he was strong.  
Thus, the training. 

\-------

He should be making more progress. It is a terrifying thought. At first, this strange ritual had been as though plunging his hand (either one, really), into a pool of liquid electricity and he could feel the force thrumming in his pulse points, could sense every quivering emotion on the base. 

Now, he is wrapped in gauze. The force surrounds him, but muffled and far away.  
Voices are muffled and hard to hear.  
Especially over the sound of his pulse ringing in his ears whenever he stands. 

So he starts another seven days. And he hides them behind a front of shorter training fasts and the secret of his self inflicted sickness he uses late at night after Han has long left the meals.  
Han, who perhaps twitches less at loud sounds. (Han who still makes the tendons inside Luke vibrate, as if plucked, with a single wicked look.) 

Perhaps this is working, Luke thinks absently. He knows the thought makes no sense. But as he wraps the tape around his waist and marks the difference, he somehow can’t bring himself to care. 

\-----

Han still smiles less. Volunteers for patrols more. Somehow always shows up at Luke’s door with invitations to breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks, or extra scouting missions. 

So perhaps it’s only to be expected that Han is the first person Luke collapses in front of.  
The rebellion has moved their base to a humid forested portion of a remote planetoid. The heat creeps down their collars, the watery air sits heavy in their lungs. The great lizards they ride on seem unaffected, but all the water on this planet cannot be enough to erase the aching tension inside Luke. Cannot be enough to chase away his heartbeat thrumming in his temples.  
When they slide off the beasts to examine some wreckage, the soft silence of the forest races up Luke’s form and stuffs itself inside his head.

He tries to breathe through the exploding blackness of stars, takes a few shaky steps away from Han. Tries to wait and regroup and shake the buzzing from his ears. Tries to stop the world from slipping away beneath and around him, and fails. And then falls, trembling to the soft, loamy forest floor. 

\-----

Excuses (no, _explanations_ , he reminds himself) are given and believed. Because why would a Jedi have cause to lie? And Luke finds himself walking free with instructions to drink more water (as if he could possibly drink more when he is living on it already), to take it easy (as if he could right now even if he wanted to, with so much work to be done), and to take a daily pill of electrolytes (and that actually sounds like something he could do). 

Luke throws one back as he passes through the cargo bay and chases it with a long drink of water. Presses a hand to his aching stomach with a grimace, willing his body to ignore the ever more present pains. 

 

And then, something large, and solid, and very definitely Han is shoving him, too hard, into the wall, grabbing his wrists together in one hand and pressing them into the cold metal above his head. 

For a moment Luke tries to determine the topography and geography of his wrists from that grasp, tries to chart their changes and his stomach drops with the same perverse pleasure of a dizzying descent in an x-wing when he realizes Han can hold them both together in one hand. Realizes his real hand might be as small and slight as the metal pistons of his mechanical one. Realizes with a thrill he must be doing well. Realizes he is fixing things. 

And then, realizes that he really is in such. deep. shit. 

When he comes back to himself he is definitely not trembling, he tells himself, that must be Han. And indeed, Han does seem to be shaking as well. The muscle in his jaw is going, and Luke realizes with a start that the lines around Han’s eyes have started coming back at some point, marking his face with exhaustion. 

“Luke,” Han tries.

“It’s fine, it’s-”

Luke doesn’t get any further than that because, really, what exactly is this, and how can he ever articulate it in such a way to make that wounded look Han is wearing go away? Han interrupts him. 

“Luke. This?” Han shakes Luke’s wrists gently in his grasp and slowly brings them down between them. 

“You see this?” Han wraps his hands around each of Luke’s wrists and at that moment, Han looks like he may as well be blind, staring light years away through Luke’s hands as he holds them. 

“This has to stop.”

And Han is trembling, shaking really, and Luke sees clearly the images he tries not to imagine when the lonely nights close in. Sees needles, and torment, and frozen torture, written across Han’s face, right here in front of him. Sees hopelessness and terror, sees all the things he had hoped to ward away flash before his eyes. 

“Luke, you’re killing yourself, kid.”

What Han means to say, but doesn’t, what he might then whisper into Luke’s ear as he pulls him close and buries his face in Luke’s hair, holding him, touching all the places Luke has numbers and percentages of change for in lieu of names, 

What Han means to say, Luke realizes then is,  
“You’re killing me.”

Somehow, Luke is mirroring Han’s hands.  
Somehow, Luke is mirroring Han’s ragged breaths.  
Somehow, neither of them are shaking, neither of them are crying, neither of them are trying to make trembling hands connect, but  
Somehow they both are pressing their lips together, somehow they both are kissing desperately. 

For an endless, dizzying moment, Luke cannot tell which pair of arms is his, cannot tell whose hair or tears or words are his, and even, so delicately and so briefly, for one unbridled moment, Luke cannot tell which wrist is which, or even whose are whose, in the fervent union of their embrace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a flight of fancy that came from watching Luke in Return of the Jedi. I'm sure the actor was just fine, but I was always struck by how thin and tired Luke looked, but with what looked like swollen glands at his jaw.
> 
> It's been a personal side headcanon of mine for a while now that Luke was struggling with an eating disorder, and I really just needed to unpack that idea and see if I could make it play somewhat realistically within the canon. As someone who can never seem to kick my own, I have a lot of small eating disorder headcanons.
> 
> I couldn't seem to leave this unwritten, so if it's evolving into a longer story than I had initially intended (in large part thanks to all you lovely readers!)
> 
> Luke isn't fixed here, but I desperately wanted to show the moment he realized that Han knew what he was doing to himself and I wanted to get to see the emotional impact that would have on Luke.


	2. From Another Point of View

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke self destructs. 
> 
> Han watches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We see this chapter here from Han's point of view - I wanted to explore this from out of the disorder of Luke's own mind. 
> 
> I had intended this to be a one-shot, but everyone's lovely comments made me keen to explore this further, and so it continues.  
> The next chapters will begin to deal with the aftermath, because things are certainly not fixed. 
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who has been so wonderful and left comments and kudos! <3

Somewhere between Bespin and Tatooine, between the chill of the freezing cloud and the hissing heat of the sandstorm, everything had changed. 

No. That wasn’t right. 

Somewhere between Cloud City and Jabba’s Palace, between encasement and release, Han had changed. 

But no, that wasn’t really right either. 

Yes, undeniably, there were changes. Fissures, cracks, and things made different in the re-casting, but really, Han would say, he was whole again. Whole, and ready to weave his life back together. 

No, the thing that was pulling at all of the re-twining threads Han was picking up of his life was the undeniable realization that, somewhere between the last time Han saw Luke before the carbonite, and the next time he can properly see him afterwards

Luke had changed. 

\-----

Han still has a hard time accepting he has lost six months to the cold freeze.  
A person could lose a lot in that time, besides simply time.  
Six months has changed Luke. 

But then, this is not simply time’s tinkering hands at work. 

 

Six months isn’t enough by itself to slink into the lines of exhaustion on Luke’s face. 

Isn’t enough by itself to explain his carefully shuttered expression. 

Isn’t enough to have pulled him into the core of himself like a black hole, leaving only faint x-rays of the man he knew shooting out sporadically - glimpses of, but not into the inner self. 

\-----

Han isn’t still locked in place, fixed like an insect on display. 

And yet, he starts to wonder at the repeating events of his days, all streaming into one. 

The seemingly simple task of trying to get Luke to join him for some food proves… difficult. 

 

On the first night, he’s told it is a Jedi thing. Han flashes on all the words Kenobi said that he didn’t understand. Focuses on Luke looking at him calmly, and he doesn’t understand.  
But he lets it lie. 

 

On the second night, Luke tells him that he has only just begun. And if it was cold in the carbonite, surely it’s just an echo of that chill that Han feels snaking up his spine. Han wonders, as he turns away, when it was that Luke became a stranger to him. 

 

On the third day, Han is brimming with warmth and charm. He’s melted himself free, he can surely charm himself past Luke’s cold front. And although Luke refuses dinner, he too is charming. They talk like they did before Bespin, before an empire had laid its marks upon them.  
They stay up late, until the soft weight of glances leaves them calm and the mellow glow of affection limns them both with warmth.  
Han tries to wrest a promise of sustenance in a glance, but then, there is only so much even he can put into a single look. 

 

On the fourth day, Han is palmed off on Leia. Luke stands in the doorframe and slight though he has become (and when did he even become so slight?) his posture brooks no argument. And if Han can’t help the sharp expression that jerks across his face, well, he for one, at least is still healing. 

 

On the fifth day, Han is desperate. He grabs Luke’s wrist, as much to hold him there as to convince himself that he is even real, still solid.  
He doesn’t gasp at how thin Luke feels.  
Doesn’t still abruptly as his fingers overlap too far around Luke’s wrist.  
Doesn’t.  
Instead he asks the question, tries, “Is this about-”  
But Luke, cuts him off.  
Luke, who has somehow grown so sharp in form and words as to cut through him,  
Luke cuts in that it is training.  
And really, that is that.  
Han whirls away cursing Jedi’s, cursing the force, and cursing old fools who would seek to smooth the spirit from a young man. 

 

On the sixth day, Han is drinking.  
Deeply.  
Swirling his senses through the sinuous silence of alcohol.  
Chewbacca leaves him to it.  
Leia finds him at it.  
He murmurs something to her about Luke fading along a dark corridor, which really, he thinks to himself through the sleep falling upon him as she leaves, can’t be allowed to continue. 

 

On the seventh day, Han is very nearly himself of old. Cocky, confident, and more than a little furious. He surprises Luke, the shadow of his energy falling across Luke’s face, casting shadows into the hollows that weren’t there before the chill. Showing a topography of the deep valleys of his cheeks and the sharp ridge of his jaw.  
Han sets his own jaw, hard.  
And for a terrible moment, he is sure Luke will argue, can read it in a look of desperation in his eyes.  
And then Luke is a placating smile, is all warmth, his features smoothing, his words soothing, telling Han of course he’ll go with him, of course he is through now.  
And Han can’t help himself, can’t stop himself from throwing his arm around Luke’s shoulders. And Han can’t tell himself if it is camaraderie, or a desperate urge to ensure Luke does follow him, or something else entirely.  
And if the feel of Luke’s shoulders so thin under Han’s hand gives dissonance to Luke’s words and ways, well…  
Han isn’t accepting shadows tonight. They deserve to be happy, for once. 

\-----

Han still isn’t sharp. His senses are almost back, but even now they have the hoarfrost of carbonite dulling them. 

Luke is, though. 

Sharp. 

Sharp in voice, cutting off phrases that would have hung like a smile between them. 

Sharp in actions, contained, controlled, efficiently moving, as though he were propelled by servos and gears. 

Sharp in form, and once again Han has his hand on Luke’s wrist.  
And once again, Han isn’t thinking about the ridge of bone beneath his palm,  
Isn’t thinking about how far his fingers wrap about that cold arm,  
Isn’t thinking about the sharp jabbing sensation he gets when Luke pulls away, sensations so like the pain of thawing from the freeze. 

If this is what truly warming up is, Han isn’t sure he can handle the pain. 

\-----

Han is still regaining his strength, re-awaking muscles frozen in time. 

Luke is burning his away. 

Han comes upon him, whirling with his lightsaber, a flare burning brightly in the darkness. 

In the light it casts, Han can see Luke’s face, briefly, planed down to edges. 

As if he might burn himself up,  
Burn himself away,  
And go out. 

\-----

Han isn’t still shaken from his ordeal, whatever Luke might think. 

He knows that Luke thinks he sees things in Han’s face, his form, his actions. Luke transmits these thoughts so resonantly, (like the thrumming of an engine igniting), (like the unspoken current Han thinks might lie between them), (like the strange look Luke gets when he is tapped into that something he calls the force), but really, he is wrong - time the healer has worked her wonders. 

And if, perhaps, a sound makes him wince, or a step makes him turn, well, they all are battle scarred by now. 

Han no more could hate Luke’s own souvenir from the hands of the Empire,  
His hand from the deeds of the Empire  
Than he could hate himself. 

(He hates the burning intensity of the crucible Luke has thrown himself into, though.  
That, certainly he can hate.)

So, no, Han is not shaken anymore. 

Except. 

Han is shaking now. 

 

He has been too worried about Luke for too long. And yet, despite the anxiety coursing through Han just looking at Luke vanishing, nothing earth shattering has happened.  
Luke still trains (far too hard and far too long).  
Luke still eats (far too infrequently and far too little).  
Luke is still here (although far too thin). 

Nothing earth shattering has happened and Han has begun to wonder if this was simply the new normal. If the stress of war has changed Luke simply by making him into something less, to protect himself. If perhaps… and this is the hardest of all… if perhaps the Luke he knew has simply vanished within the black jedi robes, behind the blinding glow of a blade. 

Nothing earth shattering has happened, until it does. 

Luke is flowing motion, in this world of dripping heat and flowing humidity, and he slides easily off of his lizzard-like mount to the ground. 

But all that liquid grace vanishes in a stuttered heartbeat as Luke sways, (and Han’s legs aren’t shaking as he steps towards Luke), reaches out a shaking hand to steady himself (and Han isn’t shaking inside as he runs towards him), and then Luke stares unseeing, takes a half-step, sways, and slips into a faint on the forest floor. 

Han realizes with a start, as he kneels alongside Luke (too pale, too thin, too not-moving, too-please-be-breathing-please) and tries to flip open his communicator to call for help, that not only is he shaking too badly to use the comm, but that he is something now, that the Empire couldn’t truly make him. 

He is shaken to the core. 

 

\-----  
Han isn’t blind.  
Not anymore. 

Not from the carbonite sickness, and not from the willful self-protective part of his brain that tried to keep him from seeing what was becoming of Luke. 

Han isn’t blind anymore, and he can’t act like he still is. 

And thank anything that he could bargain with right now that Luke was taken to the med bay, was declared stable in the transport, was going to be okay, as long as he was taken care of. 

Han paces anxiously, waiting to hear how long they will keep him, just how they will fix this (he doesn’t think about other possibilities, doesn’t think on the odds). 

 

Han isn’t blind anymore, but for a moment he doubts his eyes when he sees Luke, gaunt, thin, sick Luke come striding out of the medbay as though he had merely twisted an ankle. 

Sees Luke down a pill with a grimace, and press a hand to his abdomen, somewhere deep in the folds of his robes. 

Unbelievably sees Luke set a course towards his rooms, and not towards the meal halls. 

 

Han wasn’t broken after being tortured by the Empire, but as he watches the tormented steps of the man he called his friend stutter away, 

Han breaks. 

Snaps. 

Rushes Luke as though to snap him out of this haze of days he has been drifting into. 

Startles Luke from his distant gaze, grabs both of his too-damn-small wrists in one hand and lifts them above his head as he presses him into the wall (too hard, too hard, the back of his mind breathes.)

Luke simply flexes his wrists, and Han can feel the uncomfortable sensation of tendons standing out as sharp as pistons against his own palm, and Luke has the temerity to smile to himself. 

 

Han breaks again. 

His voice breaks. 

“Luke,”

 

“It’s fine, it’s-” Luke bites off the interruption, his mouth empty of words and so much more. 

“Luke.” Han says again, because really all he can do is hang onto the man before him. 

“This?” He shakes Luke’s hands slightly (and they are so slight), and lowers them gently between them. 

 

Han wonders as he watches Luke’s eyes flick back and forth between Han’s eyes, and his own wrists, just how much Luke can see. Wonders briefly and without coherence if blindness can be catching and if he was the only one who has been frozen. 

 

“You see this?” Han asks, looking through his hands on Luke’s wrists, seeing, and not seeing how terrifyingly unreal they look, feeling how very close he feels to being alone right here. Feeling the terrifying fear of Luke vanishing as they speak. 

“This has to stop.”

 

And Han really is shaking then, blind, and cold, all the things he has been running from thrumming through his veins. He tries to look at Luke, tries to focus and fix him and hold him there, more than just physically. 

For the first time in his life, Han wishes he had the powers that Luke does, that he could take them up and breathe warmth into those frozen eyes, bring the heat back into the vanishing man he is holding. 

 

“Luke, you’re killing yourself, kid.”

And he certainly doesn’t sob that sentence. 

And he certainly doesn’t mean to say what he says next, certainly would never have done it if he weren’t coming undone. 

But he is unraveling, the threads of himself streaming out and hopelessly tangled with Luke’s now, and he would tell himself bitterly later that he was taking advantage and that you can’t warm yourself with a crystal whose fire is going out, but at this moment the world is confusing and shivering into breaking and so he says,

“You’re killing me.”

 

And then lets his hands be anchors, lets them sink down Luke’s chest, ghost over his ribs, dig into the hollows beneath them, runs his fingers skimming down the points along his spine and hooks his hands around his hipbones. 

It’s terrible and terrifying, and damn him to hell, it’s the most intoxicating thing he’s ever done, holding Luke here, like this. 

 

And for one wild, brief moment, it’s like the dawn breaking, like light hitting eyes that have been sightless for far too long. Like the sun warming the earth when it has lain frozen for far too long. 

And Luke’s cold, shaking fingers tangling in his hair feel fiery hot, and Luke’s cool lips pressing against his are a searing sunburst breaking over his mind. 

 

Maybe Han was wrong. Maybe he was broken, just a bit.  
Maybe they had fractured pieces off of him.  
Made him aware of pieces he was missing that he never realized he needed. 

So that now? Now maybe, in the warm space between himself and Luke, in the circle of his arms he has made around them, in the solid safety of feeling Luke still real against him…

Maybe the two of them can put broken pieces together again.


	3. Who's the More Foolish?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> War runs in where heros fear to tread. 
> 
> It's funny, Luke would think later (with the safe margins of distance and time between them) - running was always what Han was supposed to be best at.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a short interlude chapter.  
> The angst is strong with this one - I can't seem to let a moment lie. 
> 
> The next few chapters might take a little longer in-between, because I'm trying to plot out a larger arc and work it into canon compliancy. 
> 
> As always, thanks for reading! I can't tell you what your notes and likes have meant to me writing this! <3

The moment does not last. It is pulled between them like the stretching of the stars to warp. 

Luke is pulling away, always drifting just that much farther out of reach. 

Luke is pulling away and if regret were something solid he could hold onto, he would have crushed it down to shining carbon beneath his hand. 

As much as he would like this moment to remain around them, frozen like a dome, he can feel the shiver in the feelings of the people around them. Can feel the tremblings of more than just the two of them, can feel alarms about to ring, perimeters about to fall, things waiting to happen. 

\-----  
__  
Someday, Han thinks, he ought to work on developing a way to think before he acts.  
That day, Han thinks, really ought to have been yesterday. Last week. Hell, even earlier today.  
Any time before this moment.

_“I’m sorry-” and it is pulled from his lips just as Luke is pulling away from him (always away, always drifting just that much further out of reach)._

_And Han is sorry, though that is too poor of a word for what he always seems to do - taking from a friend at their nadir. Too pitiful of a word for wrenching something from Luke at the bottoming out of a dive. Too small of a way to say that Luke was right, that what Han was best at was taking care of himself._

_Because Luke is pulling away, and Han has broken whatever he imagined being woven between them._

\-----

There should be a word for the space before a vital phrase can be uttered. 

If there were, it would be in that space, Luke thinks in a daze, that he would have spoken.  
Would have shared too much in this too-safe space. 

Regret can become a tool, a reminder, a learning experience. 

The klaxon alarms sound. 

The base springs to action. 

The rebellion scrambles to organize the evac Luke could already feel coming. 

\-----  
__

_The blast shield has come down again over Luke's eyes, his expression closed off and cold and Han knows he's gone too far this time, pressed buttons that should have stayed silent beneath the smooth glass of a panic box._

_“Evacuation,” he can see Luke mouth, his words lost over the sirens and the shouting of orders._

_As much as Han wants to pull Luke in again and catch him in his orbit, as much as he would do anything to recall that last stuttered step too far that left Luke shuttered and pulling away, he pulls himself together._

_They both have jobs to do._

_And if it happens to give to Han the mercy of the void of space between them, then so be it.  
And if it happens to let the cool of the spaces between stars seep back inside him, then so be it. _

_He can take a lesson in tactics from the rebellion and retreat, regroup, and maybe, if his own private force of Luck can stay with him, maybe he can find a way to take back his motions._

_And, more importantly, a way to reach the man who keeps pulling farther and farther away._

_(And if Han has learned nothing else from the spirit of the rebellion it is that there is always a weakness, always a way in)._

_He wills himself to believe this, even as he watches Luke dash to his x-wing in the shuttle bay._

\-----

“Evacuation,” he tries to say, and tries not to put the weight of his own relief at escape into the word.  
It doesn’t matter, his mouth is empty, the sounds are lost to the busy silence of emergency flooding the bay. 

Luke tells himself many things, as he makes his way through the evac procedures. 

He tells himself that he is glad Han came to his senses and stopped Luke when he did.  
That he is glad for the space around him to give him time to cool his pulse thrumming in his temple.  
That he is glad that the only hands on him are his fellow pilots doing a suit check. 

Luke even tells himself, as R2 chirps his warnings in his ears and the pressure of takeoff pins him to his seat, that all these things are true and that he is not a liar.


	4. What You Think Is Right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dagobah is a place of unstable ground.  
> Thoughts can betray you.

He had lingered too long in remorse and in concern for Han.  
He doesn’t realize the thought passed his lips aloud until Artoo blips at this as he adjusts their course, implying Luke should adjust his thoughts. 

Luke adjusts his flight brace where it presses into his collarbones. He thanks Artoo for the course correction, and they fly on in silence. 

\-----

Once again, it seems he has taken too long. Once again, he arrives too late. The forceful Jedi who had trained him so dauntlessly was dying. 

“Felt your conflict, I have,” he says.  
And  
“Confront your feelings, you must,” he says.  
Perhaps even, very softly  
“Worried, I was.”

 

And Luke is worried, heart pounding up in his throat as his mentor limps across the room.  
Because Yoda can’t die. He simply can’t. He’s not that old (he is so old). Luke needs him (he stayed away too long). 

And perhaps in another world, in another thread of timelines and realities, Yoda might have made a joke (“when 900 years old you reach, look as good, you will not hmm?”) (but Luke looks so old in the lines around his eyes, in the tautness of his cheeks, in the tightness of his jaw). 

And in another universe, slipped beneath this one, Yoda might not spend this moment replaying moments like holos and regretting (“how do you get so big eating food of this kind?”) (but even then that had been such a small piece [and he can't let himself wonder if Luke had carried the seeds of this even then] and Luke had tossed it away, and now he sees Luke’s vitality tossed carelessly away). 

This is not a perfect timeline. This is flawed and painful and just looking at his student is painful. Because of this he holds back his words and simply shuffles towards his bed. 

Twilight is chasing him. Luke trails after him. 

And Luke is pleading with him, and chasing off death. 

Yoda tries to fit the important pieces between the breaths he has left as he counts them down and parcels out the information that could save Luke, and the information that could save them all. He cannot tell now which is which. 

Vader, father, blood and rage and a dark thread running through the family tree, running through Luke as well. 

Beware the darkness, Luke, beware the cold hunger of space. Beware. 

“Complete” and “incomplete”, mandate and description, “training” and the words make both of them wince, and the time is running far too short and at the end there are failings and things left unsaid and he can finally only impart

“Sister.”

The softness of starlight shivering through his bones carries him past the things he tries to grasp.  
Settles, peacefully, and soft. 

\-----

Luke is alone.  
Until he isn’t. 

Ben is in shades of blue before him, somehow real, somehow Luke can feel his presence like before. 

But he too has changed. For the first time since Alderaan, Ben looks pained. Gone is his grace of the moment of dissolving in death. 

Too many questions cascade from Luke’s lips (and it seems the new order of directionality for him) and he settles on “Why,” which really encompasses so much. 

“Luke…” and Ben doesn’t seem to have words to give him. He sighs in frustration and collects himself and begins to piece together the shattered pieces of what he had been going to say. 

The dark side. Seduction. Uncomfortable truths. Pride and falls, and penitence and failures, both his own and others. The things he doesn’t want to lay on Luke’s back. The things he has to lay upon Luke. 

Luke’s words are held between them taut like a lightsaber, limning the divisions between them as he makes himself say the thought: “Lies.”

Ben shakes his head. “Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. What I told you then was true… from a certain point of view.”

And Luke is incredulous, because perspective can’t truly warp the fabric of reality.  
Luke can’t bring himself to ask, he lets his eyes do all the begging for him. Tell me a truth, he tries to say. 

“You must confront Vader. Prepared this time. If you hadn’t acted rashly, you would have been prepared, you training would have been complete.”

Something is hot in Luke’s veins when he looks up. 

“I had to save them! I couldn’t let them die there.”

Ben is as calm as he ever was, but oh, so serious now. 

“Did you help them? Or did their torture simply get replaced with yours?”

\-----

Luke can hide from many things.  
Himself, with ease.  
Others, with grace.  
The world, with difficulty. 

Hiding from Ben is impossible. 

The trees around them eat the silence so Luke doesn’t have to.  
And he isn’t pressing his lips together, thinning to white, and he isn’t clenching his hand to tear his glove, he _isn’t_ , except he cannot hide from Ben who reads it all. 

“Forgiveness is a virtue, Luke. Letting go of anger is the only productive way of moving on.”

Ben is a pillar of virtue. Luke is a broken column that once held a roof. 

“I don’t have anger for Vader, Ben, I’m sure that I can-”

Ben’s voice is sharp and cuts through his words and cuts away the misdirections. 

“Yourself. Luke, you must forgive yourself.”

The wind rushes through the trees and something comes undone in Luke’s chest and something that would have been a sob (if he didn’t count himself so tightly held) comes from his lips and a torrent of words and reasons rushes out to fill the void the wind has left between them. 

Everything. He says everything (nearly everything). 

“And does Han appreciate your gestures of penitence?” Obi-Wan asks with a raised eyebrow. 

 

And that seems to be the crux of things, doesn’t it?  
Luke flashes on Han, the last times he was with him. 

Han hurt.  
Han pained.  
Han tense and tight, giving him looks that would count as tortured if they came from anyone else. 

But, (and here seems to be the other crux of things, an exploding star writ across his path with too many ways to go), if this is true…

If his words and thoughts of keeping Han from pain are lies… 

Then what then, is the truth? 

And what’s his certain point of view? 

\-----

The ground on Dagobah is unstable. 

Footholds falter and crumble into the swamp. 

Luke’s thoughts spin away from him. 

With Ben’s help, he anchors some of them. 

Words like “forgiveness” and “forget” replace “failures” and “fasting”. 

At least a bit. 

Luke knows he mustn't look down. It’s something like the force - he cannot know that it is impossible, or he will fail. 

\-----

With something akin to hope he leaves the system and heads for the home of wherever the rebel base is set. 

Flushed, if not with health, than sustained by that thing that looks like hope. 

But hope is fragile and the universe outside the ship is so very large and dark and cold. 

Luke shivers and sets the course for Sullust and the rebel base.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one took a while to get posted... 
> 
> I honestly felt conflicted, writing this helps me deal with my own things, but it can be really hard to write from inside the eye of a storm. Cryptic, ya? This stuff is hard to talk about when it isn't in loose prose. 
> 
> Anyway, I love all of you for reading and leaving kudos and reviews, thank you so much - You are all so lovely. <3
> 
> The next chapter is sketched out and I'll post it as soon as I am able to.


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